Love Conquers All | Page 3

the old man's face. It was a mean face. Grandfather
Twilly had been a mean man and bad little spots of soup on the lapel of
his coat. All his children were mean and had soup spots on their
clothes.
Grandma Twilly sat in the rocker over by the window, and as she
rocked the chair snapped. It sounded like Grandma Twilly's knees
snapping as they did whenever she stooped over to pull the wings off a
fly. She was a mean old thing. Her knuckles were grimy and she
chewed crumbs that she found in the bottom of her reticule. You would
have hated her. She hated herself. But most of all she hated Grandfather
Twilly.
"I certainly hope you're frying good," she muttered as she looked up at
his picture.
"Hasn't the undertaker come yet, Ma?" asked young Mrs. Wilbur
Twilly petulantly. She was boiling water on the oil-heater and every
now and again would spill a little of the steaming liquid on the baby
who was playing on the floor. She hated the baby because it looked like
her father. The hot water raised little white blisters on the baby's red
neck and Mabel Twilly felt short, sharp twinges of pleasure at the sight.
It was the only pleasure she had had for four months.
"Why don't you kill yourself, Ma?" she continued. "You're only in the
way here and you know it. It's just because you're a mean old woman
and want to make trouble for us that you hang on."

Grandma Twilly shot a dirty look at her daughter-in-law. She had
always hated her. Stringy hair, Mabel had. Dank, stringy hair. Grandma
Twilly thought how it would look hanging at an Indian's belt. But all
that she did was to place her tongue against her two front teeth and
make a noise like the bath-room faucet.
Wilbur Twilly was reading the paper by the oil lamp. Wilbur had
watery blue eyes and cigar ashes all over his knees. The third and
fourth buttons of his vest were undone. It was too hideous.
He was conscious of his family seated in chairs about him. His mother,
chewing crumbs. His wife Mabel, with her stringy hair, reading. His
sister Bernice, with projecting front teeth, who sat thinking of the man
who came every day to take away the waste paper. Bernice was
wondering how long it would be before her family would discover that
she had been married to this man for three years.
How Wilbur hated them all. It didn't seem as if he could stand it any
longer. He wanted to scream and stick pins into every one of them and
then rush out and see the girl who worked in his office snapping
rubber-bands all day. He hated her too, but she wore side-combs.
PART 2
The street was covered with slimy mud. It oozed out from under
Bernice's rubbers in unpleasant bubbles until it seemed to her as if she
must kill herself. Hot air coming out from a steam laundry. Hot, stifling
air. Bernice didn't work in the laundry but she wished that she did so
that the hot air would kill her. She wanted to be stifled. She needed
torture to be happy. She also needed a good swift clout on the side of
the face.
A drunken man lurched out from a door-way and flung his arms about
her. It was only her husband. She loved her husband. She loved him so
much that, as she pushed him away and into the gutter, she stuck her
little finger into his eye. She also untied his neck-tie. It was a bow
neck-tie, with white, dirty spots on it and it was wet with gin. It didn't
seem as if Bernice could stand it any longer. All the repressions of

nineteen sordid years behind protruding teeth surged through her untidy
soul. She wanted love. But it was not her husband that she loved so
fiercely. It was old Grandfather Twilly. And he was too dead.
PART 3
In the dining-room of the Twillys' house everything was very quiet.
Even the vinegar-cruet which was covered with fly-specks. Grandma
Twilly lay with her head in the baked potatoes, poisoned by Mabel,
who, in her turn had been poisoned by her husband and sprawled in an
odd posture over the china-closet. Wilbur and his sister Bernice had
just finished choking each other to death and between them completely
covered the carpet in that corner of the room where the worn spot
showed the bare boards beneath, like ribs on a chicken carcass. Only
the baby survived. She had a mean face and had great spillings of
Imperial Granum down her bib. As she looked about her at her family,
a great hate surged through her tiny body